


To Deliver Grief

by nire



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Multi, Post 3x09, i don't know why i did this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2758889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nire/pseuds/nire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all debts are repaid in blood. After the events of The Climb, Nyssa al Ghul visits Starling City for one last time and creates an understanding with Felicity Smoak.</p><p>(Spoilers for 3x09.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Deliver Grief

Nyssa al Ghul, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, Heir to The Demon, is young. Youth, however, means nothing for one raised in Nanda Parbat. That death comes to everyone was the first lesson she learned in life. The second lesson was that death does not come to her father—it comes from his hands.

She has never witnessed her father in a trial by combat. Few dared to wrong The League of Assassins; among those who survived the transgression they committed, even fewer of them chose to face her father. None of those encounters happened in her lifetime—until now. And yet, as she watches blood drip from Oliver Queen’s mouth, as she sees his life escape from his eyes, she feels like she has witnessed this hundreds of times over. Oliver Queen may have been extraordinary when he still lived, but in death he is one of millions.

Death comes to everyone; that was the first lesson.

Sirab—the one Oliver Queen called Maseo—pulls up his hood and mask. He is good at concealing grief; Nyssa is better at seeing it.

She looks around, briefly considering the satchel Oliver brings with him before her eyes falls to the blade her father left at the edge of the cliff. One half of the butterfly swords Oliver had favored, it has his blood on it. She frees the blade from the ground, wraps it in Oliver’s clothing, and leaves to Starling City.

* * *

 

Within hours, she reaches The Arrow’s base of operations. She hears, as she descends the stairs, Felicity Smoak saying, “I’m staying a bit later. The system needs an update anyway.”

As she takes her last step down the stairs, she sees Oliver’s right hand man pointing a gun at her.

“What are you doing here?” he says, not much of a question and more of a statement ground out through gritted teeth.

Nyssa ignores him. She also ignores The Arrow’s protégé and his flimsy aim and takes two steps towards the person she came to talk to. “Felicity Smoak,” she greets.

“Nyssa,” says Felicity in reply, and then, with the slightest quiver to her half-open mouth, she breathes, “no.”

Nyssa wordlessly walks towards Felicity, the bundle of clothes cradled in her arms. Felicity does not reach towards it, so Nyssa unwraps it herself and presents the blade to her.

The blood, frozen cold, is still ruby red.

“No,” Felicity says again. “I don’t want to see it."

“His body—”

Felicity stands—in her heeled shoes, she is taller than Nyssa—and lifts her chin, a mask of disdain. Her gritted jaw betrays her. “I know where he is. Get out.”

Tilting her head in acknowledgement, Nyssa says, “Of course.” It is foolish of her to assume that just because Oliver Queen came alone, he did not come untracked.

She turns on her heels, and as she does so, she hears a halted sob behind her. The younger of the two men rushed forward, no doubt to offer comfort that he is not capable to give. John Diggle frowns then lowers his pistol. It is a pitiful sight—the lieutenant, when left behind by his leader, always loses his footing—but it is not for him that she is here today.

Nyssa places the sword on the nearest table before turning back to Felicity. “I am sorry,” she says.

“Be specific,” Felicity snaps, “you’re sorry for what? Threatening to kill the people of Starling, so Oliver has no other option? Watching your father kill him? Not bringing him home?”

“He is no more. His body is a mere vessel, one you neither want nor need.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I saw my beloved, right on that table,” Nyssa says, pointing at the very table she has placed the blade that took Oliver, “and I regretted it. Until now I cannot recall her without recalling the death that veiled her face, the blue of her cold veins. I wish to spare you that.”

“Not really helping,” says Felicity, her voice trembling. “Not when you bring the sword that killed him with his blood on it.”

“Nothing can help the sorrow of a bereft lover. It is something I know well, and I am sorry that you have to endure the same.”

“Oliver and I aren’t—weren’t—” Felicity falters, “yet.”

Nyssa inclines her head a fraction. “Even so.”

“Why?”

“You were a friend to Sara. She called you a creature of light.” A smile slipped past Nyssa’s guarded veneer, as it is wont to do when she thinks of the days she spent on the sea with Sara. _Felicity is strong,_ Sara said as they stood side-by-side on the deck with the ocean wind in their hair, _stronger than us in ways we can never be_. “She was not wrong.”

“The blood debt is settled,” Nyssa continues, this time addressing all three people, “The League of Assassins will not touch the citizens of Starling City. I swear this, in the name of Ra’s al Ghul.”

Unexpectedly, it is the boy now, with one hand on Felicity’s shoulder, who responds to her. “Good. Now get out.”

It is written on the set of his jaw, on how he carries himself now. His aim is mediocre, his voice not carrying the same weight, his heart still too whole, but he has stepped into the place where Oliver Queen stood. He was the protégé; now he is a poor imitation with the weight of a city on his bowstring.

Felicity sees it, too. She steps away from him, shrugs his hand off her shoulder. “No.”

“Felicity—”

“No,” she repeats, firm. “I need your word that you will touch no one on Starling.”

Nyssa stills. “I have sworn it.”

“In the name of Ra’s al Ghul, on behalf of The League of Assassins. That’s not enough. We all know Oliver didn’t kill Sara, and you still want revenge. Swear it. As Nyssa.” Felicity walks towards her, never breaking eye contact, so close Nyssa can snap her neck in two. Felicity Smoak is no fool; she is aware that Nyssa is dangerous, and yet there is no fear in her eyes.

“If I do not?”

Felicity does not answer. It is just as well; what is left of The Arrow’s team has nothing to threaten her with. All the three of them can do is to stand there, demanding for things that they are not entitled to.

“Very well. I, Nyssa al Ghul, swear I shall not lay a hand on a citizen of Starling City. I swear I shall not again set a foot in it. When its ground crack open to the pits of hell and an army of devils storm its streets, it shall not be on my hands, and I shall not look back to the cries of its people.” Nyssa does not say if, she says when. This city is crumbling on the edges, but it is not hers to burn or save.

As she walks away, she hears Felicity say, faintly, “You forgot, all that already happened.”

Nyssa laughs. She thinks she should have snapped Felicity Smoak’s neck in two indeed, and it would have been an act of mercy.

**Author's Note:**

> This episode made me write an Arrow fanfiction, which I have never written before. No, screw that, it made me write an actual fanfiction that is not just a random draft of a couple of paragraphs. I sort of saw most of what happened coming, but it still gave me, as Barry would say, a major case of The Feels.
> 
> Anyway, this was spawned by the scene in 2x23 when Nyssa and Felicity had that cute "Felicity Smoak, MIT Class '09" moment, and I just thought, you know, let's make my two favorite females on Arrow have a conversation about their dead love interests.
> 
> Around halfway through I lost track of what I was doing, and I have no idea why it ended like it ended (I apologize for any and all OOC moments), but whatever. Hope you liked it!


End file.
